Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

  “Can I push the button?” she asked in the elevator.

  “Yes, eleven. One one,” Carmen steered Katherine’s index finger in the right direction.

  Her excitement over this made Carmen feel as though she’d just awarded Katherine a lifetime of good fortune. “Nicky always gets to push,” Katherine explained, pushing several extra times.

  Carmen couldn’t keep her eyes from scanning the halls. Her heart was beating a lot harder and faster than normal. Of course she was thinking about him. Of course she wanted to see him. But on the other hand, she didn’t.

  She rested Katherine on the reception counter in pediatrics. “Katherine Rollins to see Dr. Barnes,” she said to the woman behind the desk.

  The woman wrote Katherine’s name down and located her file. “Do you want to play in the playroom for a few minutes, sweetie?” she asked Katherine.

  “Can she come?” Katherine touched her pointing finger right to Carmen’s cheekbone.

  “Of course,” the woman said, and gestured them in the right direction.

  Carmen couldn’t help looking over her shoulder as she walked. A part of her really wanted to see him. A big part.

  Well, another time, she thought, entering the confines of the playroom. It was bright and sunny, involving a few other children and lots of toys and miniature furniture. Carmen would have to content herself with standing or sitting on the floor, because there was no way she was fitting into an Elmo chair. And if by some miracle she did fit in, she wouldn’t be getting out. She pictured herself walking out of the hospital with a red plastic Elmo chair attached to her butt.

  “Hey, you.” She put Katherine down in front of a bead maze and straightened her helmet. “What do you want to play?”

  Katherine danced around, utterly pleased. She brought over a Noah’s ark, a xylophone, two puppets, and a book. Carmen knew that Katherine was always miffed at how Tibby’s friends came over and spent time with Tibby. Now she had Carmen all to herself.

  Carmen heard a girl’s giggle from behind the big dollhouse set up in the corner. She also saw a few parts of a man popping out—the girl’s father, no doubt. Carmen figured she and Katherine could take over the dollhouse once those two vacated. Twin boys were throwing Nerf basketballs at each other. Carmen observed that somebody had taken a few bites out of one of the balls.

  “How about this?” Katherine was shaking the animals out of the ark.

  They played. There were a lot of singletons in this version of Noah’s story, probably due to loss and theft, but Katherine didn’t seem to care. Carmen was the hippo, the elephant, the lion, and the penguin. It was good, because Carmen had always had a knack for animal sounds and voices. With the penguins, she really got into a character. In this case, her penguin was a mafioso, kind of like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, only in a penguiny way. Katherine was laughing so hard she stopped making any noise. The people behind the dollhouse were laughing too. The twin boys were circling them eagerly.

  Suddenly Carmen realized that the leg extending from one side of the dollhouse had a brown shoe on the end of it. A brown Puma, specifically. She cut off the penguin’s soliloquy. Moments later, a face appeared over a miniature gable.

  She put both hands over her eyes in complete humiliation. “Hi, Win.” Could she have been any louder?

  He came entirely out from behind the dollhouse. He was fighting the impulse to smile. No, probably the impulse to laugh. At her.

  “Hi, Carmen,” he said. He crawled over to where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He pushed the inner part of her elbow and made the arm she was leaning on collapse. “Can I tell you I’ve never heard a more entertaining penguin in my life? I didn’t even know penguins could talk.”

  “Ha ha,” Carmen said, straightening her arm again. She tried to pull herself up and recapture some tiny amount of dignity.

  She cleared her throat. “Win, this is Katherine. Katherine and I are friends. Katherine, this is Win.”

  Katherine stood up somewhat importantly. “Hi,” she said.

  Win pointed to her helmet. “I like your stickers.”

  She nodded. “I crushed my skull.”

  Carmen looked aghast. “You didn’t crush your skull, sweetie. You fractured it.”

  Katherine waved this off as an uninteresting detail.

  “And it’s getting better really fast,” Carmen added, possibly for her own sake.

  Carmen could tell that Win was fighting to look serious. “Hey, Maddie.”

  A lovely girl with brown skin poked her head over the dollhouse. “This is Katherine,” he said.

  Katherine headed straight for the dollhouse. “Hey. Can I see that thing?”

  “If you don’t mess up the living room,” Maddie allowed. Maddie looked to be about four, enough older than Katherine to be totally seductive.

  Win was sitting close to Carmen on the floor. She could feel the heat from his body. She could smell him. He smelled a little salty, like cashews, and a little sweet, like mango shampoo. She felt woozy.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, feeling shy after all her bellowing and swaggering with the plastic animals.

  “This is what I do.”

  “I mean, I know you work here—” she started.

  “No, this is specifically what I do. Nine to two I work in pediatrics, mostly here in the playroom. I play with kids when their parents need to talk to the doctors.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really.”

  “Yeah. And if you need work, I’d hire you in a split second. You got the place rocking with that penguin.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop.”

  “Only it doesn’t pay very well,” he said.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s not so good.”

  “It pays better than my job after two. Then I go up to geriatrics to amuse and entertain the old folks. They’re always goading me to buy them stuff out of the vending machine. I’m going into debt with that job.”

  A nurse appeared at the door of the playroom. “Katherine Rollins?”

  Carmen got up. “Hey, Katherine. It’s our turn.”

  Win got up as well. “Your…sister?” he asked.

  “No. I’m an only child,” Carmen said. She had no idea why she said that. It was true, yes, but true in such a narrow and ungenerous way it felt more like a lie.

  “She’s…?”

  “My friend Tibby’s little sister. She fell out a window a few weeks ago. She’s going to be fine, but she has to get checked out a lot to see how she’s healing. Tibby was supposed to bring her, but her job added on a shift today, and she’s trying to save money for—” Carmen looked up. “Why am I telling you all this?”

  He shrugged, smiling. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Katherine,” she called. Katherine was having trouble parting with Maddie and the dollhouse.

  “You can tell me more, though,” he added. “I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me.”

  She heard in his voice, in its particular hopeful tone, that he meant it. She knew he meant it in a real way and not just a charming or flirtatious way. He was sincerely curious about her; he was utterly observant. She could tell that he did want to know her. And on one level this made her as happy as anything she could possibly imagine.

  And on another level it made her sad. Because the girl he wanted to know wasn’t her. He wasn’t seeing her for how she was. He was seeing her as a kind and selfless person who cared about the people around her. He was coming to all the wrong kinds of conclusions.

  And worse than that, she was letting him.

  Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I’ll show you a girl who can’t put her pants on.

  —Annik Marchand

  “Vreeland! For God’s sake, quit sunbathing and help me get some of these things in the water!”

  Bridget opened one eye and sat up on the dock. She started laughing. Eric was t
rying to pull four kayaks into the lake at once, and he wasn’t looking so graceful.

  “Dude,” she bellowed in a perfect imitation of her cabin-mate Katie’s low, sloppy drawl. “You’re late. I can’t keep covering for you like this.” Bridget lay back down, resting on her elbows, letting the Traveling Pants soak up some sunshine. She’d already set up all the rafts, oars, life preservers, water shoes, and both double kayaks. She was always early, he was always late. He was always pretending to be put out by the small amount of work she left for him to do.

  “I see it’s the usual horde of campers,” he said.

  It was another joke between them. Three weeks into camp and almost no one came for their activities. Rafting just wasn’t as sexy as extreme mountain biking, it would appear. Well, there was a small group of boys who appeared now and then, but according to Eric, they weren’t there for the boats.

  If it hadn’t been a no-flirt zone, Bridget would have batted her eyes and said, “Well, why are they here, do you think?” But she didn’t.

  “Why are you scaring the campers away?” Bridget asked. The sun made her yawn.

  “Because I don’t want to work. I want to sit on my ass.”

  Bridget smiled at that. She knew how he killed himself on the soccer field. But sitting around was mostly what they did from two-thirty to five. It was shaping up to be a beautiful rhythm—drive yourself and your team relentlessly in the morning and laze about in the sunshine with the guy you loved all afternoon.

  She got to her feet. She’d scrupulously worn her least sexy Speedo one-piece for the last few days, but it was dirty. Besides, today was not just any day. It was a Traveling Pants day. She had brought them back with her from her weekend at home, and their presence now lent a particular sweetness to the air even stronger than the wafting smell of honeysuckle. Today she wore them over her best green bikini. Anyway, Eric probably didn’t even notice or care. (Did he?) Why did she bother to think about it?

  When she got too hot, she carefully peeled off the Pants, folded them, and put them on the dock. She shook her hair out of its braid. For her pleasure alone she did a high, arcing dive off the dock and into the lake. She plunged down deep, not stopping herself until she touched the pebbly bottom. She took her time getting back up. She had always had good lung capacity. When she surfaced, Eric was watching for her.

  “What? Are you, like, a whale?”

  She pretended to be offended as she bobbed there. “Thanks a lot. Eric, girls don’t mostly like to be called whales. Ask your girlfriend if you are unsure.”

  “Humans aren’t supposed to stay under that long.”

  “Speak for yourself.” She swam over to the row of plastic kayaks. “Hey, you want to try one of these things?”

  This was a novel idea. “Sure. We might as well look like we know what we’re doing.”

  She pulled a double one loose from the rocky shoreline and into the shallow water. She sat herself down in the front and put her oars into place. He followed her into the water.

  As he climbed aboard he made a point of jostling the boat as much as possible, which got her laughing again. He settled in.

  “I think you forgot something,” she said.

  He looked around. He shrugged.

  “A paddle?”

  “Oh, that.” He sat back, tipping his face to the sun. “Are those really so important?” He was trying not to smile.

  “I’m not sure it counts as kayaking if you just float around,” she said. But she put her paddle inside the boat and lay back herself. They floated for a while.

  Even in just a week, there had been so much downtime spent together that Bridget was relaxed with him. They talked about things. It was weird to be killing time with someone about whom you felt passionate.

  She’d plucked up the courage to mention Kaya, casually, at least once or twice every day. She wanted him to know she understood. She wanted him to know she respected that he had a girlfriend and she wouldn’t try to get in the way.

  He lifted his head. “Bee,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Bee!”

  She looked up. He sounded sort of urgent.

  “What?”

  “No, bee!”

  He pointed, and she suddenly felt a buzzing around her ear. She yelped and swatted it away and it went to her other ear. She hopped up to her feet. The kayak teetered violently.

  The bee went from her to him. It flew into his hair. He jumped up to his feet and caused an even greater disturbance.

  She screeched, laughing. She rocked the boat, trying to stay on her feet. He shouted and rocked back. She crashed into the water first. She heard his splash soon after. When they came up they were both laughing even harder.

  She sputtered and coughed the water out of her nose. “I think we really look like we know what we’re doing.”

  Lena approached Annik before class. She was sweaty and sticky from the restaurant, and her feet hurt and her shirt was filthy, but she was pretty pleased with herself nonetheless. “The woman at the financial aid office at RISD said if I get my portfolio to the committee by the fifteenth of August I could still qualify for scholarship money.”

  Annik smiled big. “Nicely done.”

  “I warned them my dad is going to ask for his deposit money back, and I asked her to keep me enrolled anyway. She said I have to come up with a deposit by the end of this month.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I just took on three more shifts at my waitressing job. I really hate it, but it pays.”

  Annik clapped her on the back. Wheelchairs built up a person’s muscles, Lena decided.

  “That’s what I call fighting,” Annik said appreciatively.

  “Qualifying and getting are different, though,” Lena told her. “There is one full scholarship left to give out, and they have over seventy portfolios already under consideration.”

  Annik looked at the ceiling. “Well. You better do something good, then.”

  After class, Annik waited for Lena while she did her mopping. “Do you have an hour to spare?” she asked.

  Lena figured she could call home and make an excuse. “Sure.” Effie would cover for her if necessary.

  “I want to see what you can do with a longer pose. I’ll sit for you. I certainly can’t stand for you.” Annik seemed to enjoy her own joke.

  Lena was timid to laugh. “Are you sure you want to?” she asked.

  “I’d be happy to do it. I’ll set up over here.” She rolled over to the windows. “We’ve got about an hour left of decent light.”

  Lena felt a little self-conscious setting up her easel. It was weird staring straight at your teacher, but once Lena got drawing, she became immersed. She drew without pause for thirty straight minutes. Then Annik stretched her neck a little and Lena worked for thirty more. She’d never done more than a twenty-minute pose, and it was exciting.

  Her self-consciousness returned when it was time for Annik to look at her work. Annik looked at the drawing carefully, wheeling a little back and forth. Lena bit her pinky nail and waited.

  “Lena?”

  “Yeah?” It came out a little squeaky.

  “This is not a bad drawing.”

  “Thanks.” Lena knew something else was coming.

  “But you didn’t draw my chair.”

  “What do you mean?” Lena felt instantly embarrassed.

  “I mean, you took the drawing down to my shoulders. You would certainly see a good bit of the chair at that angle, but you left it out. How come?”

  Lena felt her cheeks warm. “I’m not sure,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Annik said. “It’s just that the chair is a big part of who I am, you know what I mean? I have all kinds of deep and complicated feelings about it, resentments, of course, too, but it is part of me. I don’t picture myself without it. I’m surprised you left it out.”

  Lena felt bad. She’d thought maybe it would seem critical of Annik if
she drew the chair. She hadn’t been sure what to do about it, so without really thinking, she’d avoided it.

  “You could make a really fine drawing, Lena. I can tell this is the right approach for you—portraits, long poses. I can see how deeply you respond to gestures and facial expressions. You’ll excel at it if you work hard.” Annik said it like she meant it. “But Lena?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got to draw the chair.”

  Tibby had never liked Loretta until Loretta got fired.

  The main reason Tibby didn’t like her was because Tibby was too old to be in Loretta’s jurisdiction, and yet Loretta acted like she was Tibby’s babysitter anyway.

  And then there was the time Loretta put Tibby’s best cashmere sweater in the dryer and shrank it so small even Katherine couldn’t wear it. Tibby knew it was petty, but she nursed a long grudge.

  In spite of all that, Tibby was appalled when her parents let Loretta go. Appalled and guilty.

  “It wasn’t her fault.” Tibby defended Loretta to her parents when she heard the news. “If it was anybody’s fault, it was mine for leaving the upstairs window open.”

  But her parents stuck by their decision, and Tibby was left feeling horrible for Loretta. In the too many hours she spent in her cluttered room (windows safely shut), Tibby thought a lot about Loretta and missed her.

  Tibby had never realized before what an easy spirit Loretta had. She hardly ever took offense at anything. She managed to defuse even the tensest Rollins family episode with her lightness and good humor. She was the master of deflecting and distracting both Nicky and Katherine from whiny behavior. This was something Tibby now sorely missed, as she listened to her mother square off and feud with Nicky day after day, sending him into paroxysms of loud brattiness. Tibby wondered how her mother had learned so little during these years of Loretta’s wise example.

  One night Tibby stayed up too late and got overly weepy. She wept bitter tears of sorrow for knowing Loretta didn’t have a job anymore, for knowing it was her fault that Loretta didn’t have a job anymore, and also for never having told Loretta how great she was.

  The next morning Tibby found Loretta’s address in her mother’s book. She clipped her hair in the barrettes Loretta had given her two Christmases ago, pulled on her most cheerful yellow shirt, got into her car, and set off to the far reaches of Prince George’s County. She had nothing but a map of the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and a lot of guilt to guide her.